Idiots Should Not Be Allowed Near Cars

It’s no secret that I like older vehicles. They’re cheaper, they're made better, and they're generally much easier to work on.

I went shopping for a Jeep a couple of years ago. Because I’m tall enough for it to matter, I needed a CJ7 instead of your typical CJ5 or other “short” Jeep. I needed legroom. Because they only made them from 1976 through 1986, any CJ7 is going to be over 40 years old. I opted for a 1981 model with a 4.2 6-cylinder engine in it. I didn’t want a V8, and I didn’t want anything newer than ‘81 because that was the last year of the “narrow track” axles.

But I digressed.

When I scoped it out, I gave it a good eyeball, and could pretty much see its many needs and shortcomings. (I’m not new at this sort of thing.)  I could see that someone had dumped a lot of money into it at some point in the past, and I knew it wasn’t the older gentleman I bought it from because everything on the Jeep looked a few years old. He also admitted that he had bought it without knowing much about Jeeps.

I didn’t drive it before I bought it like I usually do when buying vehicles. For some reason, I treated the Jeep more like buying a used motorcycle than I would have when buying a car—like it was a hobby project instead of a “driver.” I did listen to it run and played with the gears and other things, but that’s about it. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t actually drive it in 4-wheel drive or I may not have bought it (more on that later.)

Some of the costly upgrades it had on it were Moser one-piece rear axles, a nearly new Bestop soft top, Clifford intake manifold, dual-outlet headers (I’m not a fan of headers, but oh well), Holley 390 cfm 4-barrel, D.U.I. brand HEI distributor and wires, new windshield, new MileMarker 1050 hydraulic winch, and 4” lift kit. I’m sure all of these upgrades together cost one of the previous owners what I paid for the whole Jeep.

I have no idea if anything was done on the inside of the engine (such as different camshaft, etc.), but the notoriously-leaky OEM valve cover had been upgraded, so I knew some work had been done on it besides the intake and headers upgrade. I was glad to see that the dual-outlet headers were combined into a well-done single exhaust. In my opinion, dual exhaust on a 6-cylinder is overkill. There just isn’t all that much room under a Jeep for duals anyway.

I bought it up near Anacortes, Washington, and I drove it about 110 miles down to my place. It drove ok (not great), and the brakes were barely passable, but I got home without incident. I waited to start working on it until I had all the paperwork and licensing in my name. Here’s what I brought home:

 

Once I actually owned the Jeep I started wrenching on it—starting with the brakes. The rear brake shoes looked good, but peeking into the wheel cylinders told a different story. Definite need for replacement. I found that removing the brake lines from each of them was not going to happen. Neither of them would budge. I actually had to cut the brake lines to get the wheel cylinders off. After removing the shoes and wheel cylinders both, here’s what I found: One cylinder was a mud hole, and the other was dry as the Sahara desert and frozen solid. I couldn’t even free it up with a hammer: 

The shoe retaining springs were lifeless, and the emergency brake spring was in 3 pieces:

While working on those, other things became apparent, such as this cracked fuel return line and wasted axle snubber:

 

 

 

About this time I started in on the front wheels. The disc brake pads were almost shot, but were still barely usable. Knowing I was going to replace the brake rotors and the brake pads both, I started taking everything apart. I found sleeve bearings almost totally dried out, with a few of the needle bearings actually lying sideways!

 

That’s about the time I noticed looseness and clunking in the left front axle. Imagine my surprise when I pulled it out and disassembled the u-joint. Zero grease in any of the four caps, and some of the needle bearings had actually been ground down into smaller pieces:

 

  

When I tore the right side apart, it was much the same, but at least two of the bearing caps still had some grease in them:

 

  

Had I actually tried to drive it in four wheel drive I probably would have completely broken an axle or worse. (Looking back, it’s probably a wonder I made it 110 miles home with it.)

You know the old adage: One thing leads to another, which leads to another, etc. Here’s what things looked like only a couple days after I bought it:

 

With a 40+ year-old Jeep things were bound to be bad, but I really struggle when I see total neglect. I felt like someone (probably the idiot I bought it from) should be bitch-slapped and forbidden to ever own a vehicle again.

I found several more things as I went, such as the badly-installed (and too big) steering stabilizer that was rubbing on the tie rod:

 

 

How about the condition of this clutch linkage? It was ready to expire:

 

 

 

This was what I found behind one of the turn signal lights. What kind of an idiot would do this? I can see someone accidentally pinching a wire, but how could you not see it while plugging the wires together?

  

 

 

When I saw that the dash speakers had actually been cut off instead of just removing the four nuts that held it, I stopped being amazed and astounded. I just shook my head.

 It’s pretty apparent that some people should never be allowed to work on cars.